


Finding You

by reindeersidecar



Category: Uncharted (Video Games)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-20
Updated: 2017-08-20
Packaged: 2018-12-17 20:14:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11858865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reindeersidecar/pseuds/reindeersidecar
Summary: “Can we talk about something else?”Nadine coughs a laugh from behind her. “You’re the one that asked.”Chloe smiles. “I know. I just remembered that I don’t care.”





	Finding You

Rafe. The name is sour and vile in her mouth.

This is what women do though, right? Talk about their exes while they swirl wine in their glasses and laugh?

Chloe doesn’t particularly like wine. But it goes down smoother than that name.

She doesn’t know why it bothers her so much to hear Nadine speak about him. She thinks, Nadine shouldn’t even have to waste the _breath_ to talk of that pathetic, little man.

Chloe is crouched in the brush, squinting against the hot and blinding sun, when she says, “Can we talk about something else?”

Nadine coughs a laugh from behind her. “ _You’re_ the one that asked.”

Chloe smiles. “I know. I just remembered that I don’t care.”

“Friendly today, aren’t you?” Nadine grumbles. “You never talk about your relationships, Frazer,” she wonders to herself.

“Buy me a drink sometime.”

***

“How about that drink?” Nadine dangles a flask in front of her.

Chloe glances up at her and takes it, sinking further into her seat against the fallen log. As she uncaps the flask, Nadine settles beside her. The night is quiet and humid in a way that makes every strand of hair stick to her cheeks.

“Why do you care about my love life so much?” She takes a swig of golden liquid. It's heady in the back of her throat. Whisky.

Nadine snorts. “Don’t flatter yourself, Frazer,” she said. “I care about alcohol and group morale.”

Chloe smiles and passes back the flask. “Fair enough.”

The silence between them is easy—nice, even. Chloe forgets herself in the small sounds, the grass and leaves shifting in the wind, the buzz of the insects, the distant rush of a stream.

“Any man would be a fool to break your heart.”

Chloe grins. “Why’s that?”

Nadine gives her a pointed look. “I’ve seen how you drive a getaway car.”

It isn’t long before Nadine is resting her head in Chloe’s lap. She’s quite giggly when she’s tipsy, which Chloe won’t admit she enjoys. Perhaps if she were tipsier, she might.

Nadine rolls toward her and feels at Chloe’s abdomen. Chloe tenses beneath her ministrations.

“As I suspected…a full set of abs….”

Chloe swats her hand away. “You’re quite handsy when you’re drunk.”

Nadine rolls onto her back again. “You know, it’s not uncommon out in the trenches like this for fellow soldiers to help each other maintain, well, fluid levels.”

“Fluid levels? What are you on about?” Chloe looks down at her and scrunches her face when she puts two and two together. “You couldn’t find a better analogy?”

Nadine huffs a laugh. “You’ve never done that before? Out in a place like this? Don’t you get _starved_ for human contact?”

Chloe doesn’t do that anymore, not since Nate. Business and pleasure really don’t mix as well as it’s advertised. “Oh, sure,” she answers sarcastically. “Nate and I used to do that _all_ the time.”

“Nate? Like Nathan Drake?” Nadine’s eyes are wide now, blinking up at her , and Chloe feels her stomach sink. She doesn’t mean to say that. She knows Nadine has had a run-in with Nate before.

Nadine rolls off her lap, clutching her sides. She’s _laughing_. Tears are spilling out the corners of her eyes. “You’re kidding!” she gasps between laughs. “And I thought _I_ had shit taste in men.”

“You _do_ have shit taste in men,” Chloe reminds her.

 Nadine sits up and unscrews the flask. “I will say this about Nathan Drake,” she pauses to take a swig of whisky, “he looks bloody good being kicked out a window.”

***

The whole morning Nadine is acting strange.

Chloe comes back from answering nature’s call to find Nadine suspiciously red-faced and flustered, pupils blown. “You alright there, Ross?”

“Yeah,” the woman barely gets out the word. She stands and brushes the seat of her pants. “I’m fine.”

Chloe hooks her thumb over her shoulder. “You sure you don’t need to go?”

“Yeah.” Nadine hops over the side of the car and settles in the passenger seat.

Chloe dismisses the whole thing as a weird delusion of her bad night’s rest. There’s only so much sleep one could get when monkeys are chattering loudly above you. However, despite her exhaustion, she weaves the car expertly through the Western Ghats. They don’t call her the best driver in the business for nothing.

“Pull over.”

Chloe glances over at Nadine, wind blowing her hair into her eyes. “What? Why?”

“Right there, behind that outcrop.”

Chloe’s heart is thumping uncomfortably in her throat. Is someone tailing them? She quickly glances in the rearview as she maneuvers the car behind the rock. There’s no one there when she pulls in under the shade of the large boughs of a tree.

She yanks the gear lever into park and finally turns to look at Nadine. “I told you to go before we left.”

Nadine gives her a half-smile, it’s smug and bloody handsome, and she reaches across the center console, fingers hooking and tugging at Chloe’s belt loops, angling her body toward her. Her hands jump from her hips to the v-neck collar of her shirt. She fists the material in her hands, nails manicured with dirt, and she pulls her into her. Chloe jerks her foot against the pedal, tires squealing in the mud, engine revving.

She lets off the pedal, and Nadine is laughing at her, and her face is so close, Chloe loses herself in the milky way of freckles that dust her nose. Chloe tries to swallow her nerves, tries to smile, but she can’t unclench her fist from around the steering wheel, and she’s all too aware of the sweat rolling down her temple.

Nadine draws her eyes shut, and Chloe braces herself like she might for a gunshot. It feels exactly like that. Nadine’s lips are gentle, a whisper, but Chloe feels as though she’s been hit by lightning. The sensation of all her teeth shattering behind her lips, and a piercing, fiery current striking through her whole body.

It’s quiet, and it’s explosive, and it’s going to ruin her.

“Nadine,” she begins, but her words are swallowed in a bruising kiss.

“You talk too much,” Nadine says all breathy and needy in a way that makes Chloe dizzy.

“Nervous tick,” Chloe admits between kisses.

Nadine laughs and pauses to peer into Chloe’s face. Her eyes catch the sun filtering through the canopy, and they gleam brighter than any treasure Chloe has ever seen. “Nervous? You?”

“I’m no good at words. Can we get back to the kissing part?”

Nadine gives her another smug look. “And if you’re no good at that either?”

Chloe laughs and draws her close. “Oh, rest assured, love, I am.”

Nadine’s mouth is on hers again, dragging her chapped, bottom lip between her teeth. She’s all heat and gunpowder and sweat, and Chloe can’t find the space to _breathe_. Chloe rips her hand away from the wheel to clutch at Nadine’s side, at the rungs of ribs beneath the dirty cotton of her crewneck. Nadine’s hands dig beneath her waistband to free the hem of her shirt. The pads of her fingers are roughened, and Chloe shivers beneath her hungry, scouring touch.

She reaches around to cup her rear and urge her closer. It simply wouldn’t do to have this console between them any longer. Nadine laughs and climbs over into her lap, back against the steering wheel, knees pinned to either side of Chloe’s legs. Chloe grips her rear with both hands, denim rough beneath her fingers, and slides down her seat until their hips slot perfectly into one another.

Nadine licks into her mouth, before Chloe breaks away to suck at the beautiful column of her throat. The salt of her skin is sharp on her tongue.

It’s hardly glamorous, Chloe thinks, but somehow fitting that their first time together be fucking in a car parked in the bushes on the Western Ghats while hundreds of heavily-armed men are looking for them. When she’s done she eases her hand out of Nadine’s jeans and wipes them against her own pant leg.

Nadine is collapsed against her a moment, sweat glistening in the dip of her neck. She swings her hips up and over the console to settle in the seat again, smooths her stray hairs down against her head, and looks at Chloe, flushed and bothered. Chloe finds herself impossibly taken by the sight. “I’d say you’re pretty good at it.”

Chloe blinks away the haze. “At what?”

“Kissing.”

***

“Who would’ve guessed?” Chloe said, voice bouncing off the walls. “Tomb sex is better than car sex.”

Nadine stands, wiping her grinning mouth with the back of her hand before she goes to dust off her knees. “I could have told you that.”

Chloe does up the fly of her jeans. “Had a lot a sex in tombs, have you?”

Nadine leans in, strong arms trapping Chloe on either side against the broken pedestal she’s propped against. Her eyes draw down her face slow and half-lidded, and Chloe can’t even swallow past the tightness in her throat. “No,” she says finally, her eyes landing on Chloe’s mouth. “Car sex is always worse.”

***

It should bother Chloe that she doesn’t know anything of Nadine, not things she couldn’t see firsthand. She really knows her quite well, otherwise. She knows the swagger in her step, the shoulder she favors in her sleep, that she sings softly under her breath when she’s nervous about making a shot. She knows her fears, her strengths, what makes her heart pump. She knows what she likes about her, and what she doesn’t, and that she likes that she doesn’t like these things about her. But they never speak of their pasts, and perhaps that’s how it should be. Chloe doesn’t need another person in her life stuck in her past when she’s trying to move on, trying to grow, trying to become something more.

She rolls onto her side to watch Nadine. She looks absolutely divine in the light of the moon, eyes drawn shut, lips parted only just.

“What?” Nadine asks quietly, but she doesn’t open her eyes.

“What about after?”

She laughs. “After?”

“You know, after all of this. What about us?”

Nadine finally opens her eyes and turns to look at her. She studies her face intently, searching, searching, for what? A lie, maybe, or the words she thinks she wants her to say.

Chloe huffs a laugh. “What, that’s it? What happens in Hoysala stays in Hoysala?”

Nadine shakes her head, brow wrinkled. “Frazer, you can’t honestly think…”

Chloe feels a fire erupt in her belly. She sits up, blanket sliding down her body. Her face is hot with shame, and the night air is cold against the sweat on her bare back. “ _Chloe._ My name is Chloe. Call me by my bloody name.”

Nadine rises also, springy hair loose and bouncing against her shoulders. “Chloe. This would never work out there. You understand that, don’t you?”

Chloe swallows the painful tickle in her throat. “Oh, I understand. You won’t care about me, but you have no problem fucking me.” She grabs her clothes and gets up.

“Where are you going?” Nadine calls after her.

“I’m taking a walk.”

It starts a walk, but then she’s jogging, _sprinting_ through the brush. The wet grass squishes beneath her boots, breeze cooling the tears against her face, and she imagines she can run to the coast and fling herself into the ocean and be carried away by tide and sea.

She’s always been good at running away.

But at some point she stops. She stops and doubles over, hands on her knees, gasping hard to catch her breath. She walks herself back to the camp, and the sun rises by the time she does. Nadine is kicking dirt into the fire. She gives Chloe a quick onceover, sighs, and hits the trail.

***

“You’re a thief,” Nadine says.

Bombs are being dropped in the distance, and Chloe’s chest is heavy with the disastrous beauty of it all. Red and purples bruise the sky. The whole city trembles beneath smoky giants.

She lies down on the bed, mattress half-sunken in its flimsy metal frame. Her body sends up a cloud of dust on impact. The light, a single, dim bulb barely in its fixture, is swinging with each eruption. It’s hardly enough light to fill this room, but the explosions seem to do the job nicely, throwing Nadine’s long shadow from her perch on the windowsill down the floor and up the other wall. Her stern face is outlined in red light.

Her arms are crossed, her back to Chloe, stiff shoulders lifting with a sigh. She’s shed her shirt in favor of a white tank top, although grayed by sweat and dirt. Her neck is soot-streaked, the cord in it a strong, elegant line, as she peers out the window, and Chloe finds herself swallowing at the sight.

 “Sorry,” she laughs, a force of habit, “did I neglect to mention I may have shoplifted some chapstick in my youth?”

“You’re a thief,” she repeats flatly. She doesn’t so much as look at Chloe.

Chloe rolls her eyes and bores her glare into the ceiling, misaligned planks of wood stained with water. “Don’t take the moral high-ground with me.”

Nadine laughs humorlessly. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Chloe glances over at her. “You’re no better than I am.”

“I’m nothing like you.”

She looks her up and down. “No, you most certainly aren’t.”

Nadine scoffs at her and draws her knee to her chest, hunching her body over it. The graceful arc of her spine pulls her shirt up, exposing the taut, dark skin of her lower back.

Chloe sits up and swings her legs over the edge of the bed. “Look,” she sighs, “you can stay, or you can go.”

Nadine turns her head and meets her eyes. “You need my help.”

Chloe laughs. She knows this, but damn her pride, this was _her_ heist, and she wasn’t going to let anyone treat her this way. Especially someone on her bloody payroll.

“Well, I don’t need your criticisms,” Chloe offered. “I get that everywhere else, thank you very much, love.”

“Don’t call me that.”

Chloe swallows the retort in her throat. It’s hard—it fucking _stings_ —but she can’t bring herself to speak. Instead she crosses her arms and throws herself back onto the bed. Nadine sits there silhouetted in the red glow of the sky, and Chloe watches her watch the world go to shit.

“Were you going to sell me out to him?” Nadine asks. Another explosion shakes the rundown building they’re in.

“I’m a thief,” Chloe answers sarcastically.

“Were you going to sell me out?” Nadine repeats, a little louder.

“No,” Chloe murmurs, “I wouldn’t do that.” The truth is, she would’ve, if Nadine were anyone else. If Chloe wouldn’t have missed the lilt of her accent, or the bow of her pretty mouth. If she could have slept without the familiar comfort of Nadine’s soft snoring droning through the night. No money in the world, she decides, will ever be worth all of that.

***

“You okay?” Nadine murmurs.

Chloe stares out at land as it disappears into the fog, miles of ocean already between them. She’s slumped against the railing of the boat, trying desperately not to cry like a little girl.

She lost everything. The tusk. Her father’s legacy. Her own legacy.

“It was all for nothing,” she whispers.

Nadine’s shoulder presses against hers. She smells like soap, like she must have spent hours scrubbing all the grime and disappointment from herself. “Maybe not,” she answers.

Chloe looks at her. Nadine is watching her carefully. She can see the sun setting in her eyes. She wants to ask what she means by that, but the question scares her all the same.

Chloe glances ahead. “Sorry I was a shit investment,” she says with a laugh. “I owe you one, I guess.”

“Where are you headed after this?” Nadine asks.

“Australia, probably,” Chloe says. She’s not really sure where else to go, except home to lick her wounds.

“Mind if I join you?”

Chloe turns suddenly to her again. Nadine is staring out across the ocean, wind billowing through her curls.

“No,” Chloe murmurs. “Not at all.” 


End file.
